Overview: Maternity Care Practices
Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care (mPINC)
CDC’s 2022 mPINC Hospital Reports have been sent to participating hospitals.
An electronic version of each hospital’s report was sent to the e-mail of the survey recipient in mid-May. If you are unable to locate your hospital’s mPINC report, please e-mail mpinc@cdc.gov with your request and include the hospital name and address. We also invite you to sign up for our CDC-mPINC-UPDATE listserv where we send out periodic updates about CDC’s mPINC survey.
Se ha enviado a los hospitales participantes el informe correspondiente a cada hospital en relación con la encuesta de los CDC sobre las mPINC del 2022.
El mediados de mayo se envió, a la dirección de correo de la persona encargada de recibir la encuesta en cada hospital, una versión electrónica del informe sobre el hospital correspondiente. Si usted no puede encontrar el informe sobre las mPINC correspondiente a su hospital, escriba a mpinc@cdc.gov para solicitarlo e incluya el nombre y la dirección del hospital.
In the United States, nearly all infants are born in a hospital. Their stay is typically very short, but events during this time have lasting effects. Experiences with breastfeeding in the first hours and days of life significantly influence an infant’s later feeding. Several key supportive hospital practices can improve breastfeeding outcomes. Birth facility policies and practices that create a supportive environment for breastfeeding begin prenatally and continue through discharge, and include:
- Hospital policies—Written hospital policies support breastfeeding and are communicated to staff and patients.
- Staff training—Hospital requires breastfeeding education, clinical training, and competency verification for all maternity staff who work with breastfeeding families.
- Immediate skin-to-skin contact—Newborns are placed skin-to-skin with their mothers immediately after birth, with no bedding or clothing between them, allowing enough uninterrupted time (at least 1 hour) for mother and baby to start breastfeeding well.
- Early and frequent breastfeeding—Hospital staff help mothers and babies start breastfeeding as soon as possible after birth, with many opportunities to practice throughout the hospital stay.
- Teaching about breastfeeding—Hospital staff teach mothers and babies how to breastfeed and to recognize and respond to feeding cues.
- Exclusive breastfeeding—Hospital staff follow current evidence-based protocols for breastfeeding infants, and provide supplementary feedings only when medically necessary.
- Rooming-in—Hospital staff encourage mothers and babies to room together and teach families the benefits of this kind of close contact, including more opportunities to practice breastfeeding and learn their infant’s feeding cues.
- Follow-up after discharge—Hospital staff schedule follow-up visits for mothers and babies after they go home and connect families to community breastfeeding resources.
